All of these systems can be armed with conventional or nuclear warheads. Just think of the implications! Not only does that mean that the entire ABM effort of the USA is now void and useless, but also that from now US aircraft carrier battle groups can only be used against small, defenseless, nations !

Right now I simply don’t have the time to write a full analysis of the stunning, truly tectonic, implications of this announcement, so I will turn to my naval warfare expert friend Andrei Martyanov and repost his initial reaction to just one of these systems:

It Is Official And It Is Over.

While the whole Western media are shaking (incompetence will do this to one) in their boots from Vladimir Putin’s address, where he demonstrated, among many things, new RS-28 Sarmat ballistic missile, behind that revolutionary weapon system, one was almost completely ignored by media. Again, “education” based on catch phrases (such a “nuclear weapon) will do this to one. By far most shocking (albeit inevitable) revelation was deployment of a new hyper-sonic missile Kinzhal (Dagger) to regular service with front line Air Force units in Southern Military District. Mig-31 carries this weapon, I am positive any SU-35 or SU-30SM or SU-34 will be able to do it too. Here is a video and CGI simulation.

The missile is… well, for the lack of better word, is stunning–it is M=10+ highly maneuverable missile with the range of 2000 kilometers. The naval warfare as we know it is over. Without any overly-dramatic emphasis–we are officially in new era. No, I repeat, NO, modern or perspective air-defense system deployed today by any NATO fleet can intercept even a single missile with such characteristics. The salvo of 5-6 of such missiles is a guaranteed destruction of any Carrier Battle Group.

The mode of use of such weapon, especially since we know now that it is deployed (for now) in Southern Military District is very simple–the most likely missile drop spot by MiG-31s will be international waters of the Black Sea, thus closing off whole Eastern Mediterranean to any surface ship or group of ships. It also creates a massive no-go zone in the Pacific, where MiG-31s from Yelizovo will be able to patrol vast distances over the ocean. It is, though, remarkable that the current platform for Kinzhal is MiG-31–arguably the best interceptor in the history. Obviously, MiG-31’s ability to reach very high supersonic speeds (in excess of M=3) is a key factor in the launch. But no matter what are the procedures for the launch of this terrifying weapon, the conclusions are simple:

1. It moves aircraft carriers into the niche of pure power projection against weak and defenseless adversaries;

2. It makes classic CBGs as main strike force against peer completely obsolete and useless, it also makes any surface combat ship defenseless regardless its air-defense capabilities.

3. Sea Control and Sea Denial change their nature and merge. Those who have such weapon, or weapons, simply own vast spaces of the sea limited by the ranges of Kinzhal and its carriers.

I don’t want to sound dramatic and I knew that there were and are always surprises in Soviet/Russian weapons but today’s revelations from the highest podium in Russia about Kinzhal were shocking. The balance of power just shifted dramatically, with it the naval warfare as we knew it is no more. It is OVER!

I can only add that I fully concur with him. It is indeed set, match and game over for the Empire: there is no more military option against Russia.

The Saker

PS: here are a few videos illustrating these systems:

The Essential Saker III: Chronicling The Tragedy, Farce And Collapse of the Empire in the Era of Mr MAGA

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There is no known nuclear propulsion technology small enough to fit into a missile. Once it was hoped that such a technology would open up new frontiers (space) to human exploration, but mankind has failed to deliver, so various techno narratives had to fill the gap (from Gagarin to the ISS en passant par moon landings and exploration of the outer planets).

The way nuclear power is applied is by boiling water in a reactor. A reactor is a heavy system that is unsuitable for aviation of any kind. But it does work for large vessels since 1959 (Lenin icebreaker).

There is no such thing as unlimited range. Everything on planet Earth is bound by gravity.

“Intercontinental range”, sure. Some of our German WW2 submarines did have it to disrupt freight traffic off the American East Coast.

But a nuclear-powered underwater drone – depending on the size – doesn’t seem like an outlandish claim to me.

A Mach 10 hypersonic anti-ship missile … okay, let’s say a successor to the SS-N-22 Sunburn. By comparison, the 1944 German A4/V2 (which was “far ahead of its time”) did reach Mach 5, so oviously seven decades on, we’ve made some progress. But I think that while the engine might be able to achieve Mach 10, the missile cannot hit its target at that speed, for reasons of both precision and air friction.

A “strategic Mach 20 missile” … Well, that’s almost 7 km/s, which is orbital speed in Low Earth Orbit, so yes, that does exist … the problem is, such a missile cannot reenter the atmosphere without disintegrating in the upper stratosphere due to air friction, so it’s useless as a weapon.

No, he is not. He has to carry on this stupid nuke propaganda which he inherited from his predecessors. Raison d’Etat dictates that the show must go on. And so it will.

I think it is a message of strength to enemies, friends, the Russian Armed Forces and the Russian people that Russia won’t back down and is able and ready to strike an aggressor. Consider that these are rather bold claims of military superiority (even though the video animation quality is lagging behind by more than a decade, but who cares).

Strength is important because Uncle Sam, while losing ground due to increased resistance, will not simply roll over and die. Rather, it is in his best strategic interest to involve more countries, even in Europe, in war against Russia.

Thanks! That guy is very entertaining, and the topic is really interesting. I had never heard about these liquid salt reactors before.

So okay, let’s be optimistic and assume the Russians have managed to produce, operate and apply such reactors … That would be a very big surprise!

As for “nukes”, he only mentions them in passing, simply reiterating parts of the usual nuke gospel, without ever touching on the many conundrums the nuke propaganda exhibits, which makes it easy to rip it apart.

First let me tell you that Vlad putin is nothing, absolutely nothing l.i.k.e his predecessors.
It was unfeasible to save B Assad until Putin did it.
It was beyond belief to save Erdogan from another US run COup until the Kremilin did it.
it was impossible for a small fleet of 40 planes to deliver 180 sorties a day… until russians showed it in practice.
It was far away from imagination to deliver from the Caspian Sea, 2600 km away a dozen precise strikes deep into Syria all previously located targets by local intelligence plus glonass. Until the putin soldiers did it.(mod-to note: personal attack removed) you really forget that since Putin speech in Munich 2007 more that 10 years of continuous russian weaponry development have elapsed.
When the russian president restores the M.A.D. situation in the world, the dummies in the west better believe him. Or reality will impose itself.
By the way, what was the latest two electioneering moves by AMERICAN empire presidents?
One by G Bush, producing a flat fake Video of Bin Laden on the eve of elections. AND one by
Obamba himself sending a team of Seals to Abbotabad in Pakistan just to kill with a hollyoodesk media coverage an old man battered by illness??

Only if you believe in resurrection, of the existence of zombie CIA ‘assets’. Osama died in early 2002 at the latest. The old fellow murdered in cold blood by the Yankee ‘warriors’ was just a patsy, retired with ‘extreme prejudice’.

You must think out of the box. What if the cruise missile’s nuclear engine is an air breather just like the chemical reactors we call engines? The hypersonic ramjet compresses air or nitrogen to keep cool the nuclear reactor?

When the UNGA passed Res. 3314 (XXIX), the definition of aggression, they put an explicit warning of general war in the preamble (“Considering also that, since aggression is the most serious and dangerous form of the illegal use of force, being fraught, in the conditions created by the existence of all types of weapons of mass destruction, with the possible threat of a world conflict and all its catastrophic consequences…”)

Russia’s public reaffirmation of MAD sets the stage to put some more teeth in international criminal law. If you look at postwar diplomatic history, it’s a 70-year effort to get the US government under control: CAT v. Operation Condor, the Rome Statute v. Operation Iraqi Freedom, State Responsibility Articles v. US coercive interference, the list goes on and on.

The most urgent items on the to-do list include:

(1) End the P5’s veto impunity
(One way is by reviving the Small Five proposals, particularly
..Prohibit vetoes of UN measures against the most serious crimes;
..Require the P-5 to justify their vetoes in terms of international law;
..Require the UNSC to hold serious crimes to account under international law.
Another way is by replacing the UN and institutionalizing genuine rule of law, which members have explicitly considered since the 80s.)

(2) Eliminate loopholes the US inserted into the Rome Statute permitting P5 nations to avoid command responsibility for crimes, in the next Assembly of States Parties.

Since crimes against peace are fraught, in the conditions created by the existence of Sarmat, Kinzhal, and Avangard…

An article from the conspicuous BKampmark in the canadian GlobalResearch sums it all up.
Vlad Putin´s address to the people and his interview constitute two things:
1- an electioneering propaganda on the eve of elections
2- a series of threats to the West.
In summary, the US of A looks, listens and acts nonchallant just like the lustruos cowboy who just heard a few menacing words from the ‘mexican’ bandit.

Amusingly, the peddlers of Zionazi hasbara such as Kampmark above don’t really understand how silly they appear in the eyes of more intelligent people when they suddenly toss in a (mostly) truthful assessment such as the timing of Putin’s monumental speech being connected to Russia’s Presidential Elections. Why, of course there is such a connection! Putin swiftly pulls the rug from under the nonsensical/treasonous ”opposition” by being very honest and also highly successful in dealing with the serious tasks he has committed himself to. And making that perfectly clear to the whole citizenry.

As for his ”series of threats” victimology rubbish, I really hope Kampmark’s personal anguish keeps him awake at night.

It is the time before an election. And yes, Putin is comfortably ahead according to any polls anywhere. But still, I would never assume that a speech delivered not long before an election was done without any political motive.

Although, it seems like the only position that could cost a candidate such a comanding lead would be one where a candidate says they will simply surrender and submit to an aggressive foreign power.

One of the many things that most Americans do not understand is that a leader who stands up to the USA will always be popular with their people.

You think they would. “Standing up to Washington” is a popular stance for any American politician at the local or state or even congressional levels. Almost all politicians, even long-time incumbents, pose as outsiders who are fighting against Washington in their campaigns.

So, it shouldn’t be a strange notion that in the rest of the world leaders who also “Stand up to Washington” always gain popularity.

Putin didn’t need to do this for the election, although I’m sure it didn’t hurt him. And Putin seems very different from Hillary in that while Hillary would inflame international tensions to gain personal political advantage, I don’t think Putin would. Which means he’s probably felt for quite some time that this needed to be said to the USA, and now is the time to say it.

The timing is partly from having the weapons systems at least far enough along to brag about them. This combined with what Paul Craig Roberts has been saying for sometime now which is that the USA has been taking the very dangerous stance of convincing the Russians that the USA is likely to start WW3 sometime in the next decade or so if not in the next few years. Which of course meant that Putin would eventually tell them to “Back Off!”.

Putin knew he needed to deliver that message. The weapons were ready. Or at least close enough. And it sure wasn’t going to cost him any votes.

I would say that the main problem is that psychopaths dominate in so called “deep state” and western governments and one of their main features is inability to see consequences of their own actions. They go by wishful thinking. And that is enough to destroy the planet and the humanity. On the other hand, what we call a normal person, does not have an idea about psychopathy as a mental disorder. People learn about it mostly through disinfo spread by media and think that psychopaths were crazy people. They are not crazy, they would often obey laws and they even would write them. What they lack is a real feeling of humanness and conscience. They lack a human essence. They have a drive to control whatever and whomever could be controlled and to impose their delusions on others in order to control them. One can say that they rule the world. They think that they would survive the nuclear war in their bunkers and then, come out and rule those who survived on the surface on the planet. Their delusions and our ignorance will cost us dearly. Its only a matter of time when they will press the button.

Back in the 1980’s, I was out protesting against Reagan’s “Star Wars” plans for missile defense.

What I saw was an obvious problem which made the whole thing a giant waste of money that would only make a few well connected defense contractors very rich. The problem with missile defense is that the task of hitting a bullet with a bullet is so very complicated and difficult that it is going to cost a lot of money. Meanwhile, the counter measures that overcome these defenses are much simpler and cheaper.

That’s largely what Putin just announced …. that contrary to the US belief that their opponents would do nothing and just let their missiles be countered, that Russia has invested in the sorts of technologies that make missile defense as we know it useless and meaningless.

The US politicians and defense contractors have been conducting rigged and simplistic tests for decades. Limits on the tests such as there is never more than one incoming target, and that the missile defense is launched knowing the trajectory and timing of the incoming target. And still they’ve had a very hard time doing the rather difficult task of hitting a bullet with a bullet.

Putin just announced that the fantasy is over and that the real-world won’t be like these simplistic tests. Now they’ve got to hit a supersonic target that’s also highly manueverable. Or cruise missiles were also always an obvious counter to ballistic missile defense, so now Putin just announced that they have a cruise missile with unlimited range. Which means the defender won’t know where its coming from. They can fly the thing to the south pole and have it attack from there, or from any other direction where what defenses there are against a cruise missile are weakest.

So, exactly as those of us who opposed Reagan’s Star Wars in the 1980’s said, there are cheaper counter measures that make the defeat the defenses. This means the USA has wasted tens of billions or perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars on a system that obviously always had these flaws.

Soviet nuclear missiles were “made in Ukraine”. After the coup in the Ukraine, Russia more or less had no choice but to build a new, 100% Russian nuclear missile. And it seems the Russians made a few improvements to the old design. So now Trump has to spend $1.2 trillion (In full: $1,200,000,000,000) for new nuclear missiles. That’s $4,000 for every man, woman, and transgender in the USofA.

Toppling the Ukraine government was a bad idea; we just haven’t found out how bad yet.

E-35 A plane actually designed to kill it’s pilot.
the individual contractors were not fully aware of the fact.
Are we still using Russia to service the space station ?
Not to forget our heavy bombers B-52. 50 to 55 years old, but they were upgraded and refurbed.
How is the debate on skirt length for US service men, women or is it boys and girls, I am not keeping up.
US America is a dying empire and our leaders don’t give a hoot.

Of course what Putin fails to realize is many western countries have weapons even more impressive than that. Plasma ball systems. Ion pulse systems. Anti-gravity topping beams. Let alone faster than light speed ARVs. Doesnt matter if a missile is nuclear powered with unlimited range, it can be shot down.

But it is only the globalists that want to attack Russia and he should develop small accurate missiles to target at their houses or their media outlets. Deal with the real enemy – eg Soros, MSM, CNN etc…. I dont think anyone in the West would complain about that.

You are not alone. Every weapon containing radioactive substances in significant amounts is a radiological weapon. These are by definition WMD due to the inherent indiscriminate damage done to everyone exposed to radioactive remains. Examples of such radiological WMDs are the infamous “depleted” uranium bullets NATO likes so much and dispersed by the hundreds of tons already.

Considering the missiles and submarines radioactive propulsion systems, it simply does not make sense to equip them with conventional warheads. With nuclear warheads, it does of course make little difference if the propulsion system itself is radioactive. Testing the propulsion system however turns criminal easily, in particular if the radioactive source is not fully contained and/or is not recovered completely after the test.

On the other hand, if containment is achieved, there are chances/risks that the energy source will be used for powering trains, cars, maybe even airplanes. In this case, I expect that the inevitable accidents and spills will drive the final nail in the coffin of our biosphere.

For the sake of a healthy future, I am convinced that certain technology should never be invented.

hmmm, wasn’t there an unexplained release of isotopes that can only be made in a nuclear reactor a few months back? Blamed on Russia, of course. But no one ever tracked it down to a specific facility .

Yeah, I was not sure what to make of it for a long time. However, it seems that the release did stem from Mayak when the facility tried to produce a cerium-144 source for neutrino research in Gran Sasso, Italy. Cerium-144 is only available in sufficient quantities in fresh spent nuclear fuel. Dissolving such fuel in order to extract the wanted isotope is fraught with high risks. In my opinion, half the blame goes to the researchers at Gran Sasso who ordered the source. There is an article in science magazine with the story.

Wow, mind blowing weapon(s) capability.
I can only say that the achievements of Russia punctuated the graft, the blatant theft of money by the Pentagon and weapons contractors.

Why does the F35 cost so much money ? It is already inferior to the Mig31?
Hypersonic missiles are in the arsenals of Russia and China . . . why build more antiquated carriers (and there support groups), there must be better uses for the trillions of dollars spent ? So many more “why” questions. President Eisenhower was correct about the military industrial complex.

I’d always reckoned that it was not in Russia’s nature to just sit back and tolerate the US menace on its western borders — quite frankly, I think it deeply alarmed many in Europe too. But having long ago summed up President Putin– I’d got to love his quiet patience and the way he always looked so deadpan … as if you could explode a nuke next to him and he’d not even bat an eyelid!

A year or so ago, Putin said that Russia would be ready … not his exact words and he did not elaborate much– but the way he said it and although I never shared it with anyone– I knew the moment I heard him saying these words– that Russian military tech had advanced way beyond any threat the US could throw at it.

From that moment I felt relaxed– thus, when Putin finally brought this info into the public domain– it was almost not news to me, as if it was happening as a matter of course — still, it tickled me pink! I remembered the incident with the USS Donald Cook — An SU giving it the lesson of its life in the Black Sea– swiftly and silently rendering it a dead duck in the water! My dad always used to say, you can mess with any nation, as long as its not Russia– Russia you leave alone, if you want to live to become old and die peacefully! LOL
PS: I’m so proud of Russia, I have to virtually pinch myself that I’m not a Russian!

I wondered why Putin felt a need to disclose Russia’s new weaponry and to state so emphatically that they would be used to defend allies no matter how small the nuclear weaponry involved.
I think I now know why: read Turkish Daily Discloses Five-State Plan to Disintegrate Syria (link below). It describes the US, UK, France, Israel and SA plan to destroy Assad; it is duplicitous and horrible.
link: http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13961214001261

These weapons, if they exist and fully tested, change nothing! They simply restore MAD; which is important of course. The Western Empire will continue to use asymmetrical warfare with proxy and insurgent forces coupled with a fifth column and continued economic sanctions. More importantly they will continue to exclude Russia from the “Western Club” to which Putin’s masters really desire.

The encirclement will continue till there is chaos all around Russia on every aspect of your boarder. The final piece will be to pry away your allies and further isolate Russia; you cannot win.

For all the fun that the neocons and MSM made of Reagan’s “Star Wars” program, the Strategic Defense Initiative contained in it all the elements to make the US nuke-proof, while ramping up the STEM base of our productive economy via fundamental breakthroughs in physics, or “new physical principles,” as the Russians call them. They are, after all, inventors of the Tokamak, still the most promising engineering approach to achieving steady-state nuclear fusion. The original SDI, as proposed by Drs. Edward Teller and Winston Bostick et al. and adopted by the Reagan administration in 1983, was based on very promising directed-energy research from the inertial fusion program, since then woefully underfunded.

Along comes Maj. Gen. Danny Graham and dumbs down the idea to crackpot pipe dreams like “Brilliant Pebbles” and “High Frontier,” which amount to little more than throwing rocks at incoming ICBMs. Those rocks would have to be hypersonic and maneuverable if we are to believe Putin’s description of new Russian systems, which I am inclined to because of Russia’s long-standing commitment, even in Soviet times, to fundamental science, not consumer electronics or war-profiteering boondoggles like the F-35. American blindness to the near-limitless potential of devices based on “new physical principles” can be seen in the fact that Wikipedia, for example, describes Graham as the “architect” of the SDI, when in fact he co-opted the advanced-science approach for the benefit of international finance, which must prevent a new fusion era from challenging their speculative oil economy. Much of the funding for anti-nuclear, global warming and other “environmental” causes obeys similar reasons.

So it seems to me that the cat Putin is letting out of the bag (aside from boosting his upcoming electoral chances with an increasingly nationalistic Russian population) signals that Russia has succeeded in catching up to the advanced science platform for defense and economic development that the US once sponsored and held out as an opportunity for cooperation with the USSR to end the Cold War and put MAD—mutually assured destruction—behind us once and for all, and has since backed down and reversed even further once the Soviet Union fell apart. Instead of partnering with an emerging non-communist potential economic mega-bloc, Western financial speculators saw those events as an opportunity to loot the former Soviet economy to the bone, aided and abetted by the corrupt “oligarchs” (not really that, in the broader historical sense) of the CPSU.

That’s over now, and we’ve come full circle with the opportunity to apply “new physical principles” to making nuclear war obsolete—as we could have 35 years ago. In a way Putin’s national address does announce a new arms race, but in the context of the first two thirds of that address also means an entirely new framework for economic development on an unprecedented scale, which was the deeper meaning of Reagan’s SDI anyway—aborted, of course, by the Bush/CIA cold coup within that administration. I, for one, don’t mind the idea of a new “arms race,” especially since the US has been unilaterally pursuing just that for years in Eastern Europe and asymmetrically as well with its ongoing destabilization of the Middle East, which is ultimately against Russia anyway, as in Mackinder’s geopolitical mandate to contain the “Eurasian Heartland” and Brzezinski’s “Arc of Crisis” all along the underbelly of the USSR, for which Osama bin Laden was imported from Wahhabi Saudi Arabia.

More than a slap in the face the news from Russia should be seen as a bucket of cold water to wake up Western (especially US) brainwashed masses and perhaps even leadership to the reality of a long-overdue overhaul of our strategic posture. Nuclear-propelled angels of death will be looming perpetually aloft to remind us

Thank you for the article. As usual, there is a wide array of interesting comments, thank you for that, community.

I am still very much interested in the timing and purpose of these announcements.

For many of us, here, the rapidly solidifying trend of Russian comparative augmentation in military weaponry/capability foreshadowed increasing capability advantage, as punctuated by these revelations.
The trend in the empire has been accelerating in the military industrial complexes capability to suck money out of the system, regardless of systems capability increases or otherwise; the best example is the doomed F-35 project, which while it is an early call, looks like it may possibly fail and be terminated!
Regardless of the fate of that particularly money grubbing/results forestalling ‘project’, the central issue is structurally infected into the system, whereby, the most prevalent characteristic (of the empire’s military industrial complex/system of governance) is the capability to get money, regardless of delivery of capability.
The phenomenon is unlikely to be able to be reformed from within, since the people with the capability to change things are the ones at the receiving end of all of the $$$ and have developed great capability to prevent it from being changed.
All this leads to the growing likelihood of a collapse of the entire empire, as many here have formed a general consensus on.
Scary, nonetheless.

It brings me back to my first statement,

…timing and purpose of these announcements ???

Clearly there is an element of peace by mutually assured destruction of aggressors against Russia (and likely China).
But what does Vlad know that he has to put his juicy eggs on the table, at this time?
Does the empire’s attack plans exist, and more importantly, are they in progress?
To many of us, the eerie similarities to the pre-Great War (WWI) period is cause for concern.
Does Vlad have more detailed and validated information about what is admittedly becoming obvious?

Lastly, what, if anything, does the downing of the Russian military transport in Syria have to do with the a. entire geopolitical arena? b. the middle east arena? and c. is there still a meaningful distinction between them?

Of course, its very little surprise that for all the billions of dollars spend on satelites and eavesdropping on the world that the vaunted US intelligence apparently had no idea about most of this.

Surprise, surprise, surprise.

Just add it to the long list of stuff they’ve missed. Little things, like the collapse of the soviet union that always seem to take them by surprise.

Of course, these days the CIA has been acting more like a second Pentagon with operations in the field like funding and arming jihadist groups. Not only are they creating dangers in the same jihadist terrrorist groups that then attack EU and USA, but they are apparently completely blind as to real threats to the country.

In response, the US intelligence agencies will of course ask for more money. A lot more money.

I’m not an ‘arguer’, as have no more energy for it: however while I agree that the performance characteristics of these new weapons are impressive, I do not see them as the Game Changers proposed here. If any of these weapons ever had to be used against the US/NATO/West, we are into WW3, end of story, end of world. All that Putin has worked for would be severely damaged, destroyed as would the West. It’s a NoNo.
IMHO, what Putin was doing here was demonstrating deterrence, while hiding ‘that which he couldn’t talk about’. We all know Russia and China have superior missile tech to the West. However, as Putin was at pains to point out its still a race. Russia is ahead for now, but this may not always be the case.
I think/feel that Putin was showing off missiles like new toys to distract the West. He hardly made any mention of energy or cyber weapons. Yet, that episode in the Black Sea re the USS Donald Cook was to my mind far more significant than all the missiles he demo’d in his speech. (I have yet to hear any convincing argument that that incident in the BS did not in fact occur…). If Putin can show off missiles like toys…he is hiding something much more significant and effective. Like an ability to permanently neutralise US forces and weapons systems… So if e.g. the Chinese chose to enterprise taking back Taiwan, and the US, as anticipated, responded, this would be an opportunity to demonstrate an ability to neutralise the entire US Pacific fleet sent to support Taiwan, and any other forces involved. Neutralise, not destroy. Also, to be able to neutralise incoming missile threats etc.
A passive neutralisation can become active: it would be quite possible for Russia to go from defensive energy projection into actively neutralising US ability to project force, without killing anyone. Combine this with cyber warfare and Russia/China have won without fighting… Very Asian martial arts. The West would then def. listen to them. I will not argue this further. It’s just an alternative take on his speech with the benefit of historical perspective.

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